ABSTRACT
The technological significance of nanoscale phenomena and devices was explored by Dr. K. Eric Drexler in the mid-1980s. The quantum mechanical nature of materials at the nanoscale, where classical macroscopic laws of physics do not operate, are irrelevant when it comes to pharmaceutical science, especially drug delivery, drug formulation, and most nano-assays. Size of drug particles is a critical aspect of drug delivery. The Holy Grail of any drug delivery system, whether it is nanoscale or not, is to deliver to a patient the correct dose of an active agent to a specific disease or tissue site while simultaneously minimizing toxic side effects and optimizing therapeutic benefit. In the pharmaceutical sciences, “nano” offers several potential advantages in the context of drug delivery that pharma is interested in. In the context of drug delivery, multivalency is the chemical interaction of ligands with several identical binding sites on a multi-presented cell.
